LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



<%p$£l iap?S# fa 

UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



With the 

Author's 

Compliments. 



Edition limited to 200 copies. 



8 



PRUDENS FUTURI 



Prudens Futuri, 



OR 



Jaunts Off the High Road. 



Al 



BY 



ALFRED BULL, 



Privately Printed 



CHICAGO 

1891. 









A* 



& v # 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, 

By Alfred Bull, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



THIS BOOKLET 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THOSE 

FRIENDS 

WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. 



PEEFACE. . 

De Q-u8to Suo, said a sixteenth century philosopher 
when asked why he, instead of his adversary, had written 
a book, and certainly "to please one's self" is as good a 
reason as any other for print. 

All have speculated on the Infinite ; some to say with 
Bardolph, " Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, 
either in heaven or in hell ! " Others, like the hostess of 
the old Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap, may the rather 
say, " Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think 
of God ; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself 
with any such thoughts yet." 

Such thoughts were a part of my education, designedly 
clerical, but turned into other channels by the slow and 
costly process of acclimatization in " this busy perplexity 
of a New World," as Gerald Massey calls it. Enclosed 
cullings are from varied contributions to divers papers, 
the Presbyterian Interior and the Spiritualistic Religio- 
Philo8ophical Journal of this city, the Spiritualist of 
London, the Harbinger of Light of far Australia, the Chi- 
cago and Minneapolis Tribunes, various other secular 
papers, and from a projected book on " Heterodox Chi- 
cago." Pot-boilers have been rigidly excluded ; the recital 
headed "Psychological " won a pleasing memento from 
Mr. Longfellow, and the "Narrative of Events about the 



12 PREFACE. 

E Shaft," however incredible, is like all else herein, liter- 
ally true. 

The broadening tendency of modern religious thought 
is still insufficient to secure an open sesame to the columns 
of papers expounding special isms, unless their backs 
be scratched, and my sow-wah is too short to reciprocate ; 
hence a seeming identification with spiritistic phases and 
journals, which implies a closer relation than really ex- 
ists, although I gratefully acknowledge many courtesies 
from those sources. 

- Preferring to use ears rather than tongue explains 
why these experiences will reach others in this form, when 
theirs have come to me rich and warm tfrom viva voce 
narration. 

ALFRED BULL. 
Chicago, December, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

1. Heterodox Chicago . . . .15 

2. Jottings . . . . . .25 

Mnemonics. — The shadow cast before. — A 
similar Case.— Euthanasia. — Ether. — Chas. 
J. G-uiteau. 

3. Phenomenal . . . . .35 

A Narrative of Events that took place around 
the E shaft. 

4. The Hicksites . . . . .51 

5. Psychological . . . . .61 

6. Experience of the Spirit in Dream Land. . 69 

Mr. Serjeant Cox. — The wife's return. — 
Three experiences. — Premonition. — The lost 
will. 

7. The Disciples of Christ . . .81 

8. A Haunted House . . ... .89 

9. A Strange Manifestation . . ,95 

10. The Christadelphians and the Darbtites . 99 

11. An Obscure Disease . . . .111 

12. L'Exvoi . . . . . .117 



HETERODOX CHICAGO 



HETERODOX CHICAGO. 



Wonderful stories had corne to our ears of the 
sights to be seen, the sounds to be heard, by the 
expenditure of a solitary picayune at a weekly 
meeting held not a thousand miles from Chicago, 
where folks were said to " get " Spiritualism as 
others get religion. The rites of voodoo, howl- 
ing dervishes, negro camp-meetings, all were 
cited as fit comparisons, and we determined to 
feel what it was to be there. 

Over a sweltering stretch of knotty sidewalk 
we travel towards the setting sun, to eventually 
find ourselves in a cozy little hall, its pillars 
twined with tri-color, its proscenium flanked by 
extraordinary efforts at reproducing the human 
form, and surmounted by a quaint, frog-like 
figure, fit presiding genius of the exercises about 
to take place. 

In an oval are arranged three rows of chairs 
forming the mystic " circle," seated thereon in- 
vestigators into the harmonial philosophy. Well- 
developed heads are there, though here and there 
are visible startling facial angles, and abrupt 
transitions from eyebrows to hair that would 
warm the hearts of Darwinian philosophers. 



18 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

Doctors without diplomas, professors filling no 
"chairs," mediums learned in every phase of 
spiritism abound. The music of the spheres is 
reproduced by a jangling pianoforte, and the 
chairman, middle-aged, complacent, self-satisfied, 
begins a narrative of his experience, in which 
spirit prophecies, the exhumation of dead bodies 
and instantaneous conversions figure. 

The chairman seated, a pause ensues, until with 
peculiar swaying motion, and movements sugges- 
tive of partial paralysis or incipient epilepsy, which 
are common to nearly all the speakers who suc- 
ceed her, there stands before us a gaunt, raw-boned 
woman, whose straggling hair, lack-luster eyes, 
and disjointed harangue, bring Meg Merrilies in- 
stantly before us. Scott's creation, however, pos- 
sessed no substratum of emotional Methodism 
such as can be traced through her monotonous 
speech, and ennui has claimed us for its own, 
when 

" Pop ! " with Jack-in-the-box-like celerity, a 
little round-shouldered man is on his feet, and in 
thin, piping, nasal tones, whose rapid utterances 
are well-nigh unintelligible, holds us spell-bound 
by his extraordinary gesticulations until with a 
"pop." shrill and unexpected as the first, he 
subsides. 



PBUDENS FUTURI. 19 

Long silence, a bland request from the chair- 
man u not to fight off the influence, but to let it 
come," and a plump French woman, whose eyes 
twinkle with mirth behind her glasses, rises, and 
in a curious patois, redolent of slave-quarters, 
the backwoods, frontier and the slums, but which 
an initiated neighbor informs us is " Injun," 
speaks of the hereafter and her "control's" ex- 
perience of it. A pause, a shrug and long-drawn 
sigh, and the volatile medium proceeds to declaim 
in slow measured words and purer English, as 
best seems to please the second spirit which now 
possesses her. 

Her place is taken by a spare, dark man of 
severely intellectual appearance, who, with the 
same distressing abruptness, now holds forth in 
an unknown tongue. 

" Greek ? " suggest we. 

" Choctaw," says the initiated neighbor, but it 
is Greek to us. 

Our Choctaw seats himself with a complacent 
smile ; a Welch woman, whose face recedes in 
beautiful perspective from that initial point, her 
nose, follows, is embarrassed, tries again, falters, 
engages " Pop " in a rambling conversation, and 
" the influence " leaves her. 

After various false alarms, a lady is requested 



20 PRUDENS FUTTJRI. 

to come to our aid, and kindly does so in an 
oration of rare beauty, abounding in Christian 
charity and delicate turns of thought. She has 
done, to our regret, and an immense. female, whose 
ample -proportions are magnified by the strong 
colors she wears, now has the floor. She is " big 
Injin chief, Chippewa," rejects with disdain the 
sly • suggestion from a friend that all Indians 
ought to be hanged, for says she, with greater 
truth than she wots of " Chokum Chippewa, hur- 
tum mejum squaw ! " Her voice rises, her superb 
animal organization responds, she (he) trundles a 
mighty war whoop, and selecting an old foe in 
the audience, holds him spell-bound by a torrent 
of aboriginal invective, far more true to nature, 
we fear, than ever Cooper was when he wrote of 
the red men in the forest. 

A suggestion is now started of a " chiel amang 
us takin' notes." Dismay succeeds, but the pos- 
sibility of appearing in print is too great an in- 
ducement for feminine vanity, the bait is taken, 
and a tall, angular woman, carefully draping a 
valuable shawl around her as she gets up, in- 
dulges in dreamy abstractions and a mellifluous 
conglomerate of absurdities touching upon life 
beyond the grave. Her wish is granted; may 
she be happy. 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 21 

Music again ; a hymn is sung, and a lusty 
Irishman, " a milkman, very bashful in the normal 
state," suavely requests permission " to take the 
flure." General expression of pleasure at the 
prospect following, a waltz is played, the "flure" 
taken, and our Irishman sails around the inner 
circle, cutting capers, jig-dancing, revolving in a 
manner wonderful to behold. A devil's tattoo is 
beaten by lively boot-heels upon the waxed floor, 
and in a few moments their fair owner is also on 
her feet, and pressing towards the center. Ad- 
mitted, her clumsy movements grow rapid, the 
fun fast and furious ; her shawl falls, she doesn't 
heed it ; off goes her hat, on she goes ; and when, 
panting, she returns to her seat, with hair dis- 
hevelled and disordered dress, Paddy continues 
his airy gambols, fresh apparently as when first 
he "got " the influence. 

A lady in the audience calls attention to the 
manner in which the woman danced, and the 
position in which she held her hands, deducing 
the fact that she must have had a spirit- partner, 
and henceforth this discoverer remains the center 
of an admiring group, is not without honor in her 
own country, and plumes herself upon the pos- 
session of spiritual vision. 

The music leasing, the meeting breaks up into 



22 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

a general sociable, and eccentricity now has full 
play. Each speaker holds mimic court, and from 
every side noat up scraps of conversation — " Me 
see um squaw over dere." — " I see a spirit stand- 
ing by you." — "Your thinkum box," — etc., a 
curious jumble. Little knots gather round the 
burning and % shining lights who now become 
prominent. Here a heavy-featured M. D., with a 
number of faded-looking women clucking in his 
train, suggests the barnyard king or the chief of 
a Salt Lake harem. There a little English woman 
betrays her monomania by occasional peals of 
laughter breaking strangely in upon the tale of 
domestic infelicity and confinement in a private 
asylum which she is pouring out to sympathetic 
ears. This lady is a fire-medium, hot and angry 
as the element she braves, as she describes her 
treatment by skeptics at a recent exhibit. Next 
her, a woman invites you to her rooms to witness 
divination by " tea-grounds," and one of her most 
interested auditors is a bony Hibernian, well ad- 
vanced in years, about to drop into a fortune 
through a lapsed or missing will. The lights are 
now dimming, a communist has mounted a chair, 
and enunciates his peculiar views, and the proud 
possessors of a dozen proffered cards from profes- 
sional clairvoyants, trance speakers, and others of 



PRUDENS FTTTURI. 23 

that ilk, we make for the open air, and as our 
mystified brain resumes normal operations, con- 
clude that there are more things in heaven, 
earth, ai)d hell than were dreamed of in our 
philosophy. 



JOTTINGS 



JOTTINGS 



Premising only that the following incidents 
are true, and have not heretofore been in print, 
let me first recite the substance of a conversation 
recently held with a gentleman well known in 
Chicago, and much farther afield, whom we will 
call, for purposes of non-identification, Mr. Si 
Loam. 

"I am rather materialistic," began Mr. Loam, 
" and can explain to my own satisfaction whatever,, 
seemingly abnormal, there may be in this ex- 
perience. Some time ago, while engaged in liter- 
ary work, which has since met with a cordial 
reception on both sides the Atlantic, I found work 
aggravatingly suspended by the loss of some 
important data — drafts, lists and other subject- 
matter — which my assistant insisted had been 
placed upon my desk, but which had myste- 
riously disappeared. Immediate search failed to 
discover them, and after frequent fruitless en- 
deavors, the press of daily work put the matter 
temporarily aside, as no progress could be made 
in this particular until a large amount of pre- 
paration had again been undertaken, or the miss- 
ing papers found. 



28 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

" Three weeks passed, and one night, after a 
busy clay occupied with routine and other issues, 
I went to bed to find myself presently unexpect- 
edly wide-awake, and in a few minutes listening 
to a clock striking two. My thoughts were idle, 
my condition receptive, when a voice, distinct 
and clear, said to me, 'Si ! Si ! You'll find those 
missing papers back of the nest of drawers on 
the left hand side of your writing table.' ' Well,' 
said I, 'I am much obliged to you, whoever you 
-are,' and in a few minutes was asleep again. 

" Remembering this matter on waking, I re- 
solved to test the statement that morning, but 
did not chance to have convenient opportunity 
until 4 p. m., when, calling my secretary, we un- 
screwed the top of my writing table, lifted it off, 
and I invited my assistant to reach down behind 
the nest of drawers ; down went his arm beyond 
the elbow, and up, to his delight, came the miss- 
ing manuscripts. The voice ? Well, as real and 
material as any 1 have ever heard, and this was 
not the only time I had listened to it, always to 
find its assertions true. 

" Oh ! you want my theory ? Here it is : Be- 
ing a man of method, I make little allowance for, 
and permit no worry to disturb me, while I cannot 
afford to forget. Therefore I hold there is a 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 2& 

latent convolution of the brain, or independent 
minor train of thought, which runs parallel with, 
distinct from, and unnoticed by, the active ele- 
ments, positive and in constant daily use. Having 
instinctively delegated to it the search for the 
missing papers much as one would say, ' Seek 
him' to a retriever, this automatic action con- 
tinued until, the discovery made, the clock-work 
rumbled and whirred sufficiently loud to awaken 
me and create the effect of audible speech. I 
believe we all possess this faculty in greater or 
less degree, and as already said, 1 have found it 
very useful." Such automatic action might ex- 
plain why tasks conned or committed to memory 
over night are ordinarily better learned than if 
the same task were attempted in the morning. 

* # 
A fatal accident at a suburban station on the 
C, B. & Q. R. R. the last summer was not un- 
expected by the lady thereby made a widow. 
Disturbed by a clouded dream wmich left only a 
sense of impending evil, she begged her husband, 
while at breakfast, not to go to town that day; 
but he ridiculed the idea, started, waited for one 
train to pass, and crossed immediately behind it, 
only to be Cut down and mangled by a train un- 
seen by him, going in a contrary direction. His 



SO PRUDENS FUTURI. 

wife waited expectant at the door, and seeing the 
crowd which had gathered at the depot, related 
her conviction of her husband's death, before the 
improvised streteher emerged from among the 
people and began its melancholy journey toward 
her. 

Reciting the above to a friend accidentally met 
in a Chicago street-car, he told that three weeks 
before a vivid dream had led him to fear an 
accident to his mother, then far away. Misled 
by his fears he overlooked the possibility of in- 
jury to any other, only to find, a few hours later, 
that an almost equally dear mother by adoption, 
his mother-in-law, had found her deafness fatal, 
and was crushed by a C. & "N. W. Railway suburban 
train when but a few steps from home. "I 
cannot say when," said this self-made, reliant, 
representative Chicago business man, with, so far 
;as his friends know, no breath of superstition 
about him, "but of this I am sure, our premo- 
nitions will certainly become clearer, we shall 
recognize the guiding hand, the element of chance 
will be largely subordinated, and our lives will be 
more fully rounded out." All hail the time when 
no misdirected missive will go to the dead-letter 
office. 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 31 

Said another Chicago friend, a physician who 
has also done good work in other than a profes- 
sional field: "My little girl who died last spring 
was strangely dear to me ; my life seemed wrapped 
up in hers. 'Not approving of all evangelical 
methods, and opposed in many essentials to Sun- 
day school ethics, I had carefully reared her ac- 
cording to my own conception of what is right, 
and kept well away from her any thought of 
sombre wrappings, a dismal tomb and repulsive 
decay. She knew of death only as a change of 
condition, a falling asleep, when the useless body 
was laid away, its work being done. So when I 
knew that she must die, she lay for the last thirty- 
six hours almost constantly in my arms, at her 
own dear request, not fearing, possibly little know- 
ing, what the near future had in store. As the 
end drew nearer and was shadowed in her face, 
I rocked her gently to and fro, saying only, ' Go 
to sleep, dear, go to sleep, and all will be well.' 
Soon she fell asleep, and I have firm faith that 
all is well with her.' A pleasant attainment of 
that farther peak, beyond which lies eternity. 

You have recently published interesting matter 
connected with the impressions of patients while 
under the influence of ether. Permit the space, 



32 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

therefore, for the experience of a near relative 
while comatose from ether in childbed. Her 
recital is: "I lost all knowledge of my surround- 
ings to speedily emerge into brillant sunlight, 
changes of glorious light from moving boughs, 
songs of birds, scents of gardens, woods and fields, 
and walked elastic, rejoicing, along the Primrose 
Way. I found myself suddenly confronted with 
an impalpable shadow, yet seemingly dense, and 
was filled with curiosity to face the mysteries 
beyond this black opaque. With this determi- 
nation I stepped briskly forward to find facing me 
a gigantic, omnipotent-seeming eye, set in a circle 
of quivering fire, and I heard a voice saying: 
'Back ! Go back ! There is death beyond. Your 
time has not yet come ! ' I turned, the eye dis- 
appearing; returned, it again appeared; I urged 
my wishes to meet only the same monition, and 
was still vainly seeking a passage through this 
vail, when called to earth by the quivering cry 
of my little one, whose separate life was just 
begun." 

* * * 
You have also given space to the alleged fatali- 
ties and evil influences that overtook or enwrapped 
those who were active in the prosecution to the 
death of the fanatical lunatic, Charles J. Guiteau. 



PBTJDENS FUTURI. 33 

His execution chanced in my own honeymoon, 
spent at Riverside, and on my return from town 
- — his late office and my own were in the same 
building — I was puzzled to find my young wife 
had shown her fealty to the tortured president, 
and her satisfaction at the law's supremacy, by 
constructing a quaint little dusky image, labelled 
Guiteau, which, with black cap duly drawn, hung 
by the neck and a cotton thread from a dwarf 
fuchsia in our parlor-window. Accepting, under 
protest, this temporary addition to our household 
gods, the matter was dismissed from our thoughts, 
and the next morning dawned in due course, the 
Fourth of July, 1882. A gentleman from town 
accompanied us in a stroll that afternoon around 
the peninsula formed by the Desplaines river, 
and we had occasional evidence that picnickers 
and others were enjoying the beauties of the 
woods, making merry in orthodox fashion with 
crack of cracker and rifle, and pistol bang. No 
one celebrating was within several hundred feet 
of us, as we walked three abreast, the wife in the 
middle, over the springy turf, when suddenly I 
heard the angry, spiteful hiss of a bullet beside 
my ear, and the " zip " of its blow, as it struck 
and fractured a garnet brooch on metal base 
worn by my wife on plaits of hair at the nape of 



34 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

her neck, and the ball then fell to the ground. 
Our plausible explanations received no heed, the 
messenger, fortunately a "spent-ball," told its 
own tale too plainly in bent and broken brooch 
and greasy, leaden traces on her finger-tips ; our 
walk was ended, and the lady hurried home to 
remove that wicked little QfQ.gj, which had been, 
somehow, she knew not how, the deus ex machina 
of this experience. 

I am strongly tempted to run a tilt against some 
contributors who resemble the " thirty monstrous 
giants " described by Don Quixote, but remember- 
ing that his good lance was shivered, himself and 
Rosinante overthrown upon his first assault, I 
am reminded in season that the title "Religio- 
Philosophical " is very eclectic, your individual 
work and that of a majority of contributors ex- 
cellent, and the space accorded to one necessarily 
limited. 



PHENOMENAL 



PHENOMENAL. 



'NARRATIVE OF EVENTS THAT TOOK PLACE AROUND 
THE E. SHAFT OF THE CHICAGO, WILMINGTON 
AND VERMILLION COAL CO., IN BRAID- 
WOOD, WILL CO., ILL., ON THE 
NIGHTS OF AUGUST 14: AND 

15, 1877. 



Preamble: Since the under- written phenom- 
ena are of a character siifficently remarkable and 
abnormal to merit a careful recital and preserva- 
tion, I take this earliest practicable opportunity 
after their occurrence, while my recollection of 
details remains minute, to record them for my 
own satisfaction, and with a possible view to 
publication in the interest of humanity and of 
social science — with the proviso that up to the 
date on which these incidents took place, my in- 
vestigations into Spiritualism had only extended 
to occasional seances with professional mediums; 
and had resulted in the belief that the something 
which had eluded my research might be the work 
of a low order of spirits, might be the result of an 
unknown power, often accompanied by trickery, 



38 PRUDE NS FUTTJKI. 

possessed in unequal degree by different indi- 
viduals, who were usually of inferior moral, in- 
tellectual, or physical caliber. With my position 
towards Spiritualism defined, I now commence in 
narrative form, a truthful and consecutive state- 
ment of events which occurred in my presence, 

and in that of Mr. , whose relatives reside in 

New York (I withhold his name), on the nights 
of August 14th and 15th, 1877. 

On the afternoon of the first of August I re- 
ceived instructions to report for special duty at 
Pinkerton's headquarters on Fifth avenue, Chica- 
go, and a few hours later found myself comfort- 
ably housed in the police barracks extemporized 
by the Chicago, Wilmington & Vermillion com- 
pany upon their property in Braidwood. The 
position seemed to be a sinecure. 

With some thirty-five others, I was detailed 
upon guard at various points around the G- and H 
shafts with ample leisure for a scramble to "the 
face" to see coal dug, to hunt for curious insects 
or fossils. Our occupation was rendered easy, 
notwithstanding recent troubles with the strikers, 
by the presence of Dwight, Streator and Pontiac 
militia, by the enrollment and nightly drill of 
some 250 colored "blacklegs" (miners who had 
taken the place of strikers), and by personal as- 



PRUDENS FtJTURI. 39 

surance from Gov. Cullom of his sympathy and 
material support. 

Of my companions, one had provoked remark 
by preferring to spread his blanket under the open 
sky, beside piles of props, or in the engine-house, 
rather than share our common quarters; a man 
of some twenty-live years, ill-educated, dogmatic 
and taciturn, with a low forehead, sharp ridge-like 
eyebrows, restless, suspicious eyes, small pointed 
nose, hatchet-face, decidedly not an attractive 
companion with whom to share a night-watch. It 
was consequently with little pleasure that I 
learned from him of our having been detailed for 
night duty at the E shaft, half a mile from our 
headquarters, a couple of furlongs nearer town 
than our most advanced pickets were stationed. 
These reasons seemed sufficient to explain his 
statement that we had disagreeable work before 
us, and I was relieved to hear that the mine was 
exhausted, the shaft-house dismantled, and that 
three or four days would suffice to remove the 
debris and tools, when our services would no 
longer be required at that point. 

I also learned that he had previously done 
night-duty on the same spot, as I buckled on my 
Remington, and with lunch and a blanket, we 
started for the scene of our labors at six o'clock 



40 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

on the evening of the 14th. The allotment of 
sleep had been left to our own discretion, and ac- 
cordingly I turned in at dusk, while my comrade 
watched, and was awakened by him at twelve to 
exchange places. 

The mine is located at the intersection of a 
railroad with a thoroughfare which crosses it at 
right angles. On the southern side of the rail- 
road are scattered the diminutive clapboard 
houses of the miners, each having a garden-patch, 
and fronting on the highway. On the north side 
of the track and along the eastern side of the road, 
extend, fan-like, the tall crests and ravines of the 
"dump," composed of shale and earth excavated 
during five years of working; and at the handle 
of the fan are located the main and ventilation 
shafts, both partly filled with water and boarded 
over, and the engine-house, of which the timbers 
littered the ground, its tall iron funnel still stand- 
ing and constituting with the brick work of the 
furnace, and the boilers embedded in it, the only 
portions of the house in situ north of the rail- 
road ; west of the road, its upper surface level 
with it, extends a low flat dump of coal-dust and 
earth partly covered with piles of hard-wood props, 
by the iron- work of ruined "cages," dump cars and 
debris. Near the road stands a tumble-down black- 



PRUDENS PUTUKI. 41 

smith shop, signs of decay in its iron-barred broken 
windows, nailed-up doors, grimy cupola and 
chimney, and battered, "holey" walls and floor. 
It is unequally divided by a partition, the smaller 
room containing the ash-covered forge, and the 
more valuable parts of the wreck of the shaft- 
house; the other room holding a rusty stove, 
large heap of cable, picks and other tools, and an 
old bench, upon which we spread our blanket. 

Invigorated by sleep, I marched up and down, 
until disturbed by rapid footsteps pacing to and 
fro beyond the lower dump, and in a grass-grown, 
boggy waste of five or six acres that stretched 
north to an adjoining road. I followed cautiously, 
hid, walked swiftly toward the sounds, but failing 
to discover their source, finally contented myself 
with listening carefully, and they continued at 
intervals till daylight. About one o'clock, or a 
little later I saw two lights upon the waste 
referred to, four or four and a half feet from the 
ground, dancing gaily up and down, approaching 
and retreating, and wheeling round each other 
like butterflies among flowers on a summer morn- 
ing. Lanterns, some one after the wood, I thought, 
as with ready revolver I chased them through 
knotty grass, muddy bottom, and around the prop- 
piles, but could not get within fifteen feet of them 
despite my utmost efforts. 



42 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

They were pale, shedding no radiance, waver- 
ing, flickering like a candle-flame in the wind, 
and of about four times the size. Suddenly, I 
thought I understood their nature, and, as Jack- 
o-lanterns or Will- o-the- wisps are only partial ac- 
quaintances of mine, strove more earnestly to 
make a near approach. Weary and baffled, I gave 
up the chase, and cannot tell the precise time of 
their disappearance. 

"You don't want to go chasin' them lights," 
said one of our men at the breakfast-table, as I 
narrated my experience, and propounded my 
theory, shaking his head ominously, and proceed- 
ing to narrate some marvelous story of paralysis 
accompanying a near approach. Laughingly, yet 
half angry, I proposed on that evening to vindi- 
cate my theory, and effectually dispose of his 
superstitious views, but the dancing lights did 
not again appear. 

Supper over, and on the ground again, the first 
watch fell to my lot, and my companion slept till 
midnight. Footsteps came again, faint and at 
distant intervals, but contenting myself with ob- 
serving that all property was safe and in its place, 
twelve o'clock at last arrived, as Ursa Major's 
position indicated, and I awoke my comrade. 

"Did you try to fool me during the night?" 
he asked. 



PRUDENS FUTUBI. 43 

"]STo. I have not been in the house till now." 

" Some one seized my heel with both hands, 
and half-twisted my ankle. I woke up, saw you, 
I thought, standing beside me, and drew up my 
other foot, meaning to give you a kick that you 
would remember, if you tried it again ; but I was 
tired and dropped off. And yesterday morning," 
he continued, " there came a tremendous thump, 
along about daylight, against the side of the house. 
I was asleep, but it startled me so that I woke 
sitting up. You didn't throw a stone against the 
house, did you?" 

"1 heard that noise," I replied, "and hurried 
from the other end of the road, but could find 
nothing; looked through the window, saw you 
curled up, seemingly asleep, and concluded I must 
have been mistaken." 

A little more chat, he closed the door, and I 
prepared to take off my shoes. As I did so, an 
unmistakable sigh came from the darkness, fol- 
lowed by a groan. I called my friend, again, and 
louder yet. He hurried up, and I questioned him 
as to trickery, which he solemnly denied. 

Not feeling sleepy, and disliking my proposed 
couch, I volunteered to watch and let him continue 
his nap; but declining, we went out into the 
night. 



4A PEUDENS FUTURI. 

The footsteps had become louder, and now as 
we listened, we could distinguish the measured 
tread of one pacing "sentry-go," the rush of many 
footsteps, the creaking of swift-moving boots. 
Search availed nothing, and sitting down chatting 
together, he spoke of being a fair singer, and I 
invited a specimen of his skill. 

He broke off, as a dark shadow advanced swift- 
ly towards us and disappeared. Soon from the 
opposite direction, it came again, a tall man, 
stooping, in dark clothes and slouch cap. My 
friend started up, and darted after it, slashing 
madly right and left with his cudgel as he raced 
over the low dump, while I followed, pistol in 
hand. Suddenly we stopped ; it had disappeared, 
in clear starlight on the open dump. 

Singing resumed, my "butty's" repertoire (of 
the varieties order) nearly exhausted, his songs 
became more vulgar and obscene until, in the last, 
he broke off; for the footsteps had become fear- 
fully loud and near, were all around us, on the 
low dump, the road, the gritty railroad track, and 
with them came the sound of the pick " at the 
face," of the shovel as "the rooms" were cleaned 
out, and of miners busily at work ; while from 
the blacksmith-shop came loud raps and knocks. 

"Did you hear those three loud knocks ?" And 



PRUDEXS FUTURI. 45 

my -yes" was emphasized by another rap louder 
still. 

I started to my feet. 

"We will go into that shop together, and find 
out what it is," said I. 

After some hesitation he consented. We went 
hand in hand. In the name of God, I demanded 
was there some suffering, evil or unhappy spirit 
present, who needed our help. No reply, no 
sound came. 

" If you cannot answer that, you must be imps 
of the devil," I exclaimed. 

At that, my friend snatched his hand from 
mine, new into the open air, and I followed. 

" What made you run ? " I asked. 

"You don't want to talk about the devil in 
there." 

" Perhaps not. But we will find some other 
reason yet." 

" You can't do it. I've been here three weeks, 
and there's no other man on our force dare stay 
here. They'd take their walking papers first. 
Kennedy was with me, and he could not stand it, 
and left. They take me to the edge of that shaft, 
eighty-five feet deep, and tell me to throw myself 
down." As he spoke, he walked towards the spot, 
picked up a piece of coal, dropped it between the 



46 PRTJDENS FUTUEI. 

boards; we listened to the echoing plunge, and 
walked away. Then resuming, " I've lost eighteen 
pounds since I've been at it." 

" Do these sounds follow you ? Have you heard 
them anywhere else?" I asked. 

" No. But — I have been dead once ! I was 
drowned! It was an awful warning! My grand- 
father died six times!" 

This calmly, deliberately, solemnly, his face 
rigid in the starlight, at a time when the pres- 
ence of a human being became valuable ; for the 
sounds were louder, nearer, menacing. Dogs 
(every miner keeps one) were howling fearfully. 

The eaves of the shop, its cupola and chimney 
were faintly luminous, phosphorescent; far off 
on the horizon the light of some burning house, 
barn, or prairie shone, but the coming dawn we 
had noticed a short time before seemed over- 
clouded, the air murky, dark, and stifling. 
Whether this effect was real, or within ourselves, 
I do not know. Both had remarked it, we found 
afterwards. 

I felt the reflection of a light on my face, and, 
turning quickly, saw a ball of fire fall, splash like 
molten iron on the road beside me, but without 
sound, and disappear. 

"Did you see it as it passed your face? " 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 47 

" Xo," said I, "I did not." 

" It was a finger of fire, and was shaken in your 
face ! I never saw them so near before, nor heard 
them so loud." Then after a long pause : " Can 
you pray? " 

" I don't know," I said. " I never prayed with 
anyone before, but I must try." 

"Won't you kneel down?" he asked. 

" I do not think G-od cares about position, but 
I will," and hand in hand again, I prayed, "mak- 
ing the best prayer that ever I heard," said my 
companion. 

" Now," said I, " let us repeat together the 
Lord's prayer." 

" I don't know it," he replied. 

So I said it for both. 

As we rose, all was peaceful, the silence start- 
ling by comparison with the babel that had gone 
before. The sky had cleared, and the victory was 
ours. Speaking of the wonders of the night, and 
our happy release, my companion chanced to drop 
a familiar oath, and the sound of the footsteps, the 
pick, the shovel, the knocks began again. I re- 
buked him ; they died away ; in an hour daylight 
had come, and we turned toward the shop. The 
door we had returned after our flight to close 
stood wide open, the loose coils of rope had been 



48 PKUDENS FUTURI. 

removed diagonally to the opposite corner, and 
were heaped at the end of the bench. 

We searched the low dunes, the dumps, the 
field, no trace of shifted soil or any alteration,, 
where the noise had been loudest. I looked for 
any indication that gravitation might have re- 
stored the angle of repose — the dumps were below 
it, and no indication of a slide appeared; for any 
sign in nature or man, for a trace of the rope r 
anything to account for these phenomena on ex- 
plainable principles, I could not find any. Then 
I turned in for an hour, was awakened by our 
relief, and made our report to the sergeant. He 

G-od-d d my ghosts, my prayers, my report, 

but at noon apologized; excused himself on the 
score of fatigue after a night ride for a physician, 
and on the momentary supposition that I had in- 
tended a practical joke. 

The men listened intently, and from them I 
now learned, for the first time, that on the 13th 
of August, nine years previously, a picnic had 
been held at that spot; there was a strike at the 
time, quarrels began, and ended in the murder of 
a number of men. How many, the different nar- 
rators differed too much upon for me to deter- 
mine. Confirmation of my companion's state- 
ment regarding them was also furnished. 



PBUDENS FUTURI. 49 

I gave my companion, at his request, the Lord's 
prayer, in writing and print with an alphabet for 
each, and he expressed his intention of learning it. 
Both looked forward to the evening with a 
courage born of our experience, that surprised our 
comrades ; but, as I was lying down in the after- 
noon, the sergeant brought me a telegram from 
Chicago : 

"Come at once; I want to place you on another 
operation." 

Said the Sergeant, "]N~o doubt the superintend- 
ent, who signs this, wants you on the clerical 
force or on private work. If the latter, your ap- 
parent connection with the force will cease; 
therefore, no word to the men, and take first train 
up." 

I presented myself in Chicago. 

"What about the E shaft?" ■ 

Then I perceived that the "operation" was to 
be performed on myself. 

"Who was with you?" 

I made a brief report. He noted the name. 

"Ah!" sad smile. "I don't think I will send 
you down there again." 

"Did I not do my duty?" 

Significant tap of the side of his head, repeti- 
tion of smile, finally: 



50 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

"It has a tendency to demoralize the men." 

"Yon have other work?" I asked. 

"What is your opinion about the E?" 

"That I was further within the gates of hell 
there than I thought it possible for man to go, 
and be alive." 

"No further work," said the superintendent. 

"In that case, these experiences are mine alone, 
and I am free to make what use of them I please," 
from me closed the interview. 

I paid a visit to the superintendent of the C. 
W. & V. Co. He had neither leisure nor incli- 
nation for investigation. 



THE HICKSITES 






THE EICKSITES. 



Hicksites? A branch of the Quakers, was my 
mental query and response, but as I enter the 
comfortable class-room to find the Friends hat- 
less, the sexes not separated, but few distinctions 
in dress or colors, I am disposed to question my 
information. 

~\Ve are seated, a score of us, the hour advertised 
has arrived, yet apparently the services have not 
commenced. Facing us at a plain table are three 
friends, with no outward show of heteroclitic or 
heretical belief, three unassuming gentlemen; 
and as the minutes creep slowly past, I resign 
myself to the pleasant influences of the hour, ob- 
livious of the outer world save as the jingle of 
a passing street-car, the beat of a distant snare- 
drum, or a buzzing fly, recall my vagabond 
thoughts. 

Half an hour has slipped away when one of the 
trio, a well-known wholesale dealer, rises, ex- 
presses his gratitude for the opportunity afforded 
us of gathering for public worship, sitting in 
silence of body, our minds withdrawn from all 
thoughts not having a bearing upon our duty to 



54 PRTJDENS FUTTTRI. 

God or our fellow-men, and endeavoring to bring 
our spiritual nature into the ascendency, and a 
nearness to the Great Spirit. This will lead us 
into a sense of our own spiritual needs, he tells 
us, cause prayer or asking for what we lack, and 
if it lead us into supplication it will be with 
fervent power, and the souls of those gathered 
will feel its warmth and genuineness. Sitting in 
humbleness of spirit, waiting upon the giver of 
spiritual sight and blessing, all, educated and 
uneducated, rich and poor, robust and feeble, can 
feel the fellowship of brethren under a realization 
of the Fatherhood of God. The fever-heat gener- 
ated at the outbreak of our civil war, gradually 
merging into steady determination, and strenuous, 
contained effort; the cool bravery of a policeman 
in entering, single-handed, a struggling crowd of 
lawless men, upheld in his duty by the recognized 
majesty of the law, are cited as examples and 
illustrations in the daily battle of life, and the 
speaker has done. 

But he has been too warlike, has disturbed the 
peaceful breast of an aged sister, clad in orthodox 
Quaker garb, and she takes up the gauntlet. 
Severely simple in appearance, the folded white 
neckerchief, tunnel-like bonnet, and black gown, 
suggest a time when these premature cerements 



PKUDENS FUTURI. 00 

shall be applied to real use, the hard lines in that 
worn face fade away, and the sweet smile, tem- 
porarily banished by ascetism, which we know 
to be behind those trembling lips, come to the 
surface, a pleasant aftermath for sorrowing friends 
to gather. 

She speaks with a strong German accent ; her 
address is stereotyped, as she dwells upon the 
biblical injunctions to turn the other cheek when 
one is smitten, of awarding good for evil, and 
urges upon us that patient endurance attaineth to 
all things. Stereotyped and a well-conned and 
oft-repeated lesson, yet well in accord with this 
sweet Sabbath stillness. The first speaker kneels 
and offers an earnest prayer for divine guidance; 
noon has come, notices of the classes to succeed 
are read, the infant class, that engaged in study- 
ing James Freeman Clarke's " Ten Great Kelig- 
ions,"ancl one upon "Communism." The leader 
shakes his neighbor's hand devoutly, who in turn 
greets his silent friend, the meeting is adjourned, 
and curious to know how Quakers are affected by 
the cry of liberty, equality, fraternity, we follow 
to the adjoining class-room. 

The principal speaker again leads, reads from 
the prospectus of the National Labor League, and 
from the speech of one of its most ardent ad- 



56 PRUDENS FUTUBI. 

vocates, general discussion is invited and ensues. 
An expected reading from Ruskin is missing, 
general want of preparation urged, the conclusion 
that selfishness is at the root of the matter, and 
its cure to be found in understanding that true 
theology is practical righteousness arrived at, 
and the subject deferred for future consideration. 

By the courtesy of the leader I learn the real 
points at issue between the "Wilburite, Gurneyite, 
Hicksite factions of the Society of friends, learn 
that the old objections to oath-taking, to titles, 
hat-raising still exist, but that theater-going, card- 
playing, dancing, music, statuary and decorations 
in members' houses are practically condoned by 
tacit consent. The ordinance against them re- 
mains an unwritten law, and while excess is con- 
demned, healthy and temperate indulgence in 
innocent pleasure is encouraged by many. 

The formal thee and thou are generally used by 
Hicksites in communication with the outside 
world, except by younger members, the rigid 
laws anent the marriage relation modified, the 
spirit considered more, the letter worshiped less. 
Women are admitted to all the privileges, posi- 
tions and duties of the body, including eldership 
and ministry. Elias Hicks' name is not accepted 
authoritatively, but only his views upheld so far 



PKUDENS FUTURI. 57 

as lie protested against threatened credal bonds, in 
much the same way as the majority of New 
Church members regard Swedenborg. 

The j do not undervalue the fullest preparation 
for ministerial duty by study of the Scriptures, by 
meditation, by acquaintance with human nature 
as manifested in themselves or others, and with 
science in all its branches, and by the wise use of 
all their faculties in gaining knowledge and 
broadening their perceptions of truths, but ask, 
that as the minister or disciple of Christ sits in 
the place of public worship, his or her mind may 
be gathered into stillness away from human will- 
ings, so that the divine spirit may be felt im- 
pressing it with the particular truth needed then, 
and which God alone can qualify us to unerring- 
ly see, or give the ability to present in convicting 
power. 

The Bible they accept as being the Jewish in- 
terpretation and record of God's will and dealing 
towards men and nations, setting forth in the 
light they were capable of receiving, the divine 
truth known to the Jews in the ages of which it 
bears record. They think the Word of God to be 
his spiritual voice speaking in the soul, and do 
not use the term in speaking of the Bible. They 
believe, however, that the Word of God inspired 



58 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

the Bible writers with a sense or knowledge of 
the truths they wrote of, and in this meaning ac- 
cept their writings as sacred Scripture. 

Difficult as it is to quote the general belief of 
a sect strenuously opposed to the formulation of 
its opinions into a creed, we may accept as rep- 
resentative the views of the Trinity approved and 
printed by the Illinois yearly meeting of Friends 
at their session last year. 

"We believe there is but one God, and that he 
is the Father, Cause or Qreator, primarily, of all 
things, and the continual source or fountain of 
spiritual truth, light or power. Being spiritual 
in character, we know him only through his 
works in the material world, and thus the spirit in 
us receives the divine teachings, gains experience 
in divine knowledge, and is enabled to compre- 
hend his nature, recognize his laws and present 
them to the intellectual comprehension through 
the connection of the spirit and mind. 

" Christ we acccept as the Son of God, having 
all power from the Father. As God is a spirit, 
his Son must be spiritual, like begetting like. 
As manifested in fullness of power in the pure 
and perfect humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, He 
came to close the old dispensation of priests and 
outward ordinances of human intercessors with 



PRUDENS FTJTI7RI. 59 

tithes and sacrifices, and to usher in the full and 
purer dispensation of God as a direct teacher of 
each soul through Christ, his Son, the inward 
light of that soul. 

"God's power is also manifested through the 
Holv Ghost or Spirit, as a sudden and thorough 
revealer of our errors and sinful estate,overwhelm- 
ing us with a sudden sight of our condition, fol- 
lowed by a change of heart. 

"Again, as alight or sense, enabling the receiver 
to see into or feel the state of other souls, and 
giving power to effectively reach them with God's 
convicting truth. And, lastly, as a Comforter, 
keeping them true and filling them with ecstatic 
joy in the midst of great trials or terrible tor- 
tures. Distinguished from Christ, the gentle, 
the ever-present leader and inward revealer, by 
being God's light and power manifested upon 
pressing occasion, in an especial manner and with 
unusual and convicting clearness and force; 
Ghost meaning vehemence." 



PSYCHOLOGICAL 



PS YCHOLOGICAL. 

The succeeding narrative, necessarily restricted 
where it touches upon the soul -life, " the holy of 
holies," of those still living, is submitted with- 
out further criticism than is furnished by the fol- 
lowing extract from a private letter: 

New York, May 16th, 1877. 

Dear Sir:— I have been very much interested in the 
notes you have forwarded to me * * * Whether 
they are veritable history or imagination, they are valuable 
material — especially valuable in their suggestions The 
adoption into the life of beautiful ideals in place of God, 
or in lack of God, and getting an impulse to goodness from 
them, is a unique process quite worthy of the attention ot 
the psychologist * * * J. G. Holland. 

Some years since I came to this country a 
stranger; far from all I loved, and unsuccessful 
at first, longing for home and sympathy, having 
only the stars in common with my friends (and 
not all of them), there insensibly grew up in my 
mind a morbid self-pity that alarmed yet com- 
forted me; then mobile imagination served me in 
good stead, making of rare meals of bread and 
cheese dainties fit for the gods, gilding enforced 
nightly wanderings through more than one of our 
great eastern cities with a touch of romance, and 



64 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

making many bitter experiences while roving 
from New England to the Gulf of Mexico, and 
up and down the Mississippi, the " great river," all 
subordinate to a romance that I was weaving and 
living. 

Haunted by a poem of Longfellow, "The Two 
Locks of Flair," I united the loving companion- 
ship of one dear friend with the idealized beauty 
of another, the name of a third and a romantic 
meeting with a fourth, and blending into one 
harmonious whole their various accomplishments, 
with the chivalrous devotion to women my mother 
had taught me, thought much of my past life, 
and fell to musing on the virtual death an emi- 
gres suffers when he leaves all he loves behind 
him. 

Gradually there crept into the aching void 
that my life knew, a fantasy that took tangible 
shape. I imagined that I had lost a wife, that 
our little one was ailing, and passed unscathed 
through many " trials and tribulations," upheld 
by a determination to be worthy of this shadowy 
past, to be true to the memory I had created ( it 
pains me even to allude to my ideals as wholly 
imaginary), and encouraged to persevere in secur- 
ing to my non-existent little one a thorougk 
education and a cheerful home. 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 65 

Although I knew that this was harmful, even 
dangerous, I seemed to derive real strength and 
comfort from the thought, and having what, at 
that time I was without — something to live for 
— insensibly it became a part of my nature, and 
fact and fancy so closely welded, that I found it 
difficult to realize I had possessed no wife, no lit- 
tle one; that these phantoms with which I was 
sharing my life, had no existence, save as they 
might foreshadow a happy future. 

So the purely ideal angel companionship I had 
created became an actual part of my every day 
life. Yile dens, loathsome company, continued 
ill-fortune, were set at naught. 

Finally, as circumstances improved, I dreaded 
the morbid tendency, and submitted the heads of 
this hallucination to a physician. He couched 
in pompous, technical language his real ignor- 
ance : " Morbid sensibility unduly exciting the im- 
agination, consequent on lack of proper nourish- 
ment;" but from my father came a curious 
suggestion: 

" The case, viewed metaphysically, appears to 
me a remarkable instance of the transmission of 
a mental impression from father to son, modified 
by circumstances, and intensified by want of suffi- 
cient nourishment. From the latter cause the 



66 PRUDENS FTJTUBI. 

vital force would be unequally distributed, and 
retiring from the stomach and digestive or- 
gans, might be expected to concentrate in the 
brain. 

" When your sister was taken from us in in- 
fancy, I indulged in the hope that she would 
go to be with a dear, dead friend; that the latter 
would be a mother to the little stranger and 
introduce her among the angels. While my 
mind was filled with these ideas, you made your 
advent into the world. Your phantom wife and 
child seem to me but these two reproduced as the 
result of a mental impression of which you were 
the recipient before you came into the world. 

" At the same time, may they not have been 
really with you, striving, by intensifying the 
impression, to shield you from harm? 

" I have long believed in the existence of such 
impressions derived from parents as a fact, but 
never met with so direct a confirmation as your 
experience furnishes." 

In conclusion, since ideas communicated orally 
or in writing, are never received in the precise 
form in which they are given, so with regard 
to impressions more purely mental, the recipient 
subject necessarily modifies, reproduces them in 
an altered form; and shall I, a child in matters 



PRUDENS FUTUBI. 67 

anent spiritualism, can I do otherwise than echo 
Col. John Hay's words: 

" I think that saving a little child, 
And bringing him to his own, 
Is a darned sight better business 
Than loafing around the throne." 



Experiences of the Spirit 
in Dreamland. 



EXPERIENCES OF THE SPIRIT IN 
DREAMLAND. 



Permit me to add my mite to the regret, ex- 
pressed so universally by legal, scientific and 
spiritualistic journals throughout the English 
speaking world, at the sudden death of the emi- 
nent jurist, Mr. Serjeant Cox. 

I first met him when assisting at an entertain- 
ment in Silchester Hall, London, some twelve 
years ago, at which meeting the Serjeant pre- 
sided. His easy good-nature, and interest in all 
designed for the general weal, had led him on a 
comfortless winter night, many miles from his 
own luxurious fireside, to preside at this meeting 
in a squalid, rawly-new suburb, attended by its 
poverty-stricken inhabitants, at a nominal ad- 
mission fee. And it is of painful interest to 
note in this connection that the attack to which 
he succumbed immediately succeeded his exer- 
tions consequent on a similar philanthropic 
effort. 

Through subsequent correspondence, favors 
granted me when, as honorary secretary of a 
similar series of entertainments, I needed his 



72 PKUDENS FUTCTRI. 

services, and an earnest interest in his doings as 
successively chronicled in the daily press, I 
learned to appreciate his large-heartedness and 
powers of keen, critical analysis; and rejoiced 
with him as he slowly emerged by laborious and 
patient experiment, heedless of contumely, pity 
or superficial ridicule, from the shadows of 
" psychic force " to the purer light of Spiritu- 
alism. 

Such a heart and brain as his are letters - 
patent to any movement, and his painstaking 
efforts in connection with the meetings of the 
Dialectical Society, his establishment of the 
Psychological Society, and energetic, long-con- 
tinued advocacy of the truth, have won for him 
such a place among spiritualistic pioneers in 
England as is accorded to Judge Edmonds here. 
While he had achieved three-score years and ten, 
his ever active interest in contemporary litera- 
ture, and in all the varied subjects to which he 
gave careful attention, rendered his sudden death 
an unwelcome surprise to all, and England can- 
not immediately fill his vacant chair. 

Venturing over the same path he trod so 
firmly, purveying as does the jackal for the lion, 
thankful as I am if, after all psychic, odic, mes- 
meric and magnetic aura are learnedly distilled, 



PRUDEXS FUTURI. 73 

enough remains for a meal, allow me again to 
offer the singular experiences of some friends in 
dreamland and terra incognita. As the experi- 
ences of Chicago people, possessing only a sneak- 
ing kindness for Spiritualism, notwithstanding 
the experience they themselves have had, though 
one rise from the dead they will not believe, I 
am compelled to omit all proper names and data 
that would lead to identification. Consequently 
I can only offer my own faith in their veracity, 
after having striven to exhaust all normal theo- 
ries, Spiritualism and her sisterhood apart. 

A real- estate dealer in this city, formerly resi- 
dent in a neighboring county, had the misfort- 
une to lose his wife, to whom he was devotedly 
attached, and, being of skeptical tendencies, hav- 
ing no faith in a life beyond this, a blank void 
spread before him from which his very soul re- 
coiled. Months passed, and he had become mo- 
rose, desolate, his business neglected, his friends 
estranged, the lunatic asylum yawned wide open 
for him, when, one summer evening, near dusk, 
he started for a lonely stroll. 

As his garden gate clicked behind him, an arm 
was gently linked in his own, and turning he saw 
his dearly-loved wife again beside him, gazing 



74 PRUDENS FUTURE. 

into his face with tender solicitude. Mechanic- 
ally, doubting his own senses, he turned to begin 
his stroll, but she accommodated her pace to his, 
and leaning lovingly on his arm, the familiar ac- 
cents again met his ears, and for an hour he 
listened, in ecstatic delight, to an earnest, holy 
exposition of his duties, too sacred for repetition. 
Meanwhile they had traced together the round 
he had designed, each avoiding irregularities in 
the path, making due divergence necessary from 
building materials at one point; and save that 
her step was lighter, and her motion more like 
that of floating than ordinary locomotion, he 
could detect no other changes, could only realize 
that the dreary interval had been bridged, and 
she was again beside him, the dread future van- 
ished. They had met no one on the walk, and as 
they paused for a moment at the gate, the loving 
pressure lightened, was gone, and she had disap- 
peared, while on his lips trembled the thousand 
things he had desired to say, and into his heart 
came, and took root, permanent knowledge of the 
truth that "blessed are they that mourn, for they 

shall be comforted." 

# 

* * 

I turn now to three incidents in the life of a 
city merchant, an old man racked with uncer- 



PRUDENS FUTURE 75 

tainty as to the journey in the dark so soon to be 
undertaken. 

Thirty -five years ago, a callow youth, in all 
the agonies of calf-love, he misunderstood the 
symptoms, proposed too soon to the wrong lady, 
when one in the same house had really won his 
heart. On the bridal morning, he was giving 
his boots their final polish before the ceremony, 
when the latter lady came into the room. A 
brief conversation led to the final statement, " If 
you say yes — down go the boots." But she un- 
derstood her position better than he, and urged 
him to do his duty as she understood it. In a 
short time she also married, and died in giving 
birth to a child. My friend subsequently paid a 
visit to the widower, and occupied the bed in which 
she had died. He was awakened by an impression 
of her bodily presence, and, though seeing noth- 
ing, folded her in his arms, and they held converse 
through the night. The morning found him a 
new man, his dormant duty to the woman he had 
sworn to love awakened, and her life, till its close, 
the happier for the factor which had previously 
been lacking. 

This may seem decidedly sentimental, and yet 
had you seen the odd intensity of this practical, 
satirical old man, as his memory, moved by some 



76 PKUDENS FUTURI. 

accidental trigger, recalled the scene, no one could 
doubt his own firm belief in its reality, while 
the contrast with his every-day life such an inci- 
dent affords strengthened its probability and its 
influence with him. 

Twenty years ago he retired to rest without 
thought of his daughter, a thousand miles away, 
but awoke in the morning to tell his wife he had 
dreamed of their child's serious illness, and of the 
alarm he felt. The impression remained, not- 
withstanding all efforts at sober daylight thought, 
and in the afternoon came a dispatch: "Your 
daughter is seriously ill. Diptheria." The next 
day she was dead. 

The last of his experiences, as related to me, 
was an incident occurring only five months 
since. A servant girl had recently been married 
at his house, and, removing about half a mile, had 
gone to housekeeping. Working far away from 
home, the girl's full heart had naturally been 
poured out to her kind mistress, and the ties of 
sympathy were close and strong. One afternoon 
the lady, seated by her window, heard the girl call 
her shrilly and suddenly; dismissed for a time 
the idea, but disagreeably impressed by it, finally 
prepared for walking, and arrived at her humble 
friend's home to find the latter, then in feeble 



PRUDENS FUTUBI. 77 

health, extended on the floor in a dead faint. On 
recovering, the girl admitted having called on 
her former mistress' name when first seized, 
though the distance and multitudinous noises of 
a great city effectually prevented her cry from 
being heard even by neighbors or passers by. 

Four years ago a hotel-keeper of Minneapolis, 
Minn., Aralzeman Bacon by name, whom I had 
known long and intimately, died, a free-thinker 
with disregarded spiritualistic tendencies. 
Shortly before his death he told me of the pre- 
monition he had received of his brother's death, 
when both were boys. Mr. Bacon, then seven- 
teen years old, and living on his father's home- 
stead on the Connecticut river, one afternoon, 
during his brother's absence with New York 
friends, fell without warning in a fainting fit on 
the kitchen floor. Reviving, he described the 
capsizing of a boat in which his brother and a 
party of friends were sailing, and the death by 
drowning of the former. Although entirely ig- 
norant of his brother's doings on that day, subse- 
quent letters detailed the accident with its fatal 
result, in exact accordance with his description; 
the time of the one's swoon, the other's death 
exactly coincided. 



78 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

In conclusion, my mother furnishes me with 
an interesting incident in the life of a lady 
friend who was possessed of unusual mental 
and physical attractions. Advised by mutual 
friends not to broach the subject of Spiritualism 
with Mrs. M. (as we will call her), the subject 
tabooed was eventually introduced by that lady 
herself. 

Her eager questionings won equally earnest 
responses, and led to the narration of the follow- 
ing experience in Mrs. M.'s life. While her 
mother was on her deathbed she had informed 
her daughter, Mrs. M., of the disposition she 
desired to make of certain jewelry, and its proper 
distribution among her children; but after the 
funeral, this property fell into the hands of an- 
other daughter, who, in the absence of legal 
proof to the contrary, appropriated it. So mat- 
ters remained for three months, when this sister 
wrote Mrs. M. the particulars of a dream she 
had had the previous night, in which her mother 
appeared, and stated that her wishes with regard 
to the jewelry would be found written on the 
back of an oil painting, then in Mrs. M.'s house. 

The picture had been sent to a cleaner a few 
days before, but happily was secured untouched ; 
while the paper, soiled and discolored, but legi- 



PKl'DEXS FUTURT. 79 

ble, was discovered on the back, confirming in its 
provisions the prophetic dream. 

Are such experiences proofs of immortality, or 
mnst we fall back on the neAv-old theories of 
sympathy, and lapsed memory unconsciously re- 
stored, to explain them ? Here be texts, let who 
will preach the sermon. Those who may re- 
member some extraordinary experiences of mine 
at Braidwood, 111., in August, 1877, duly detailed 
at that time, may be interested to hear of an 
agreement I have made with a noted " spirit ex- 
poser" to revisit the mines there and spend the 
anniversary on the spot together. If he keep 
his appointment, there may be a sequel to that 
story. 



The Disciples of Christ 



TEE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. 



Some months, since I attended a meeting of 
the Disciples of Christ to find myself utterly 
alone in that little gathering, for the members on 
that occasion were Danes, and the language in 
which the services were conducted was Danish; 
but managing to follow the discussion which an 
incursion of Baptists and Pedobaptists had pre- 
cipitated, I discovered so much of a character 
opposed to my preconceived ideas of Campbell- 
ism as to decide on repeating the call. I learned, 
incidentally, that notices of the services are pub- 
lished in Scandinavian as well as English jour- 
nals, and that though usually conducted in Eng- 
lish, the interests of the majority are considered 
in deciding which language shall be used. 

On my second visit to the little frame house 
in which the meetings are held, I was more fort- 
unate. It was early, yet within the little sitting- 
room five people were assembled, earnestly dis- 
cussing, Bible in hand, various doctrinal points. 
The table, something of unknown shape upon it 
covered with a white table-cloth, exercised mv 
ingenuity in vain. 



84 PBUDENS FUTURI. 

Seating ourselves in a circle round the table, a 
hymn is sung, its peculiar intonation and intermin- 
able length bridging a score of years, so vividly 
does it recall meetings of the Plymouth brethren 
in London, of which such hymns were a promi- 
nent feature. At its close a prayer is offered, 
during which all kneel, another hymn is sung, 
the eleventh chapter of the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians read, with special reference to the 
communion we are about to receive, the cloth 
raised, disclosing a square soda-cracker and glasB 
of wine, of which all in turn partake. A chap- 
ter is now read, a verse by each, and exegesis, in 
which figures prominently a Cruden's concord- 
ance, follows. 

There is a studied informality about the ex- 
ercises which is not displeasing. I am encour- 
aged to ask for information as to this wheel 
within a wheel, these Disciples of Christ who 
advertise their meetings under that name, yet 
are at variance with the sect called by it and 
more widely known as Campbellites. 

I learn that they are one in rejecting creeds as 
bonds of fellowship, and in disapproval of the 
technical language of popular theology, the use 
of such terms as trinity, eternally-begotten, co- 
essential and consubstantial. 



PRTJDENS FUTT7RI. 85 

The " Church of Christ," "Christian Church,'' 
or " Disciples of Christ" (Campbellites), organ- 
ized on an evangelical basis, has elders, deacons, 
and evangelists or missionaries, stipulates only 
for one faith, one Lord, one immersion, one hope, 
one body, one spirit, one God and Father of all; 
recognizes the obligation to provide for the 
teaching of the gospel as of the greatest impor- 
tance, and is one with evangelical Christians in its 
views of the atonement, the resurrection, and the 
future judgment. 

The Disciples of Christ who form this little 
company, with another in Illinois, one in Indi- 
ana, a few scattered along the Eastern seaboard, 
and in Europe, accept that title alone; and are 
singular in tracing their origin, not from the 
time of the Campbells' rupture with the "Se- 
ceders," or subsequently with the Kedstone Bap- 
tists, but back to the time of Christ himself. 

They claim to rely wholly upon the Bible and 
individual inspiration resulting from its careful 
and prayerful study, yet with curious insistency 
profess to be more in accord with Alexander 
Campbell's teachings than is the sect known by 
his name, with one important difference. They 
believe with him that all Scripture given by in- 
spiration of God is profitable for teaching, for 



86 PRUDENS FUTUKI. 

conviction, for correction, for instruction in right- 
eousness, that the man of God may be perfect 
and thoroughly accomplished for all good work ; 
in one God, as manifested in the person of the 
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, who 
are one, therefore, in nature, power and volition: 
that every human being participates in all the 
consequences of the fall of Adam, and is born 
into the world frail and depraved in all his moral 
powers and capacities, so that, without faith in 
Christ, it is impossible for him, while in that 
state, to please God. 

They believe that the Word, which from the 
beginning was with God, and which was God, 
became flesh and dwelt among us as Emanuel or 
God manifest in the flesh, and made an expia- 
tion of sin by the sacrifice of Himself, which no 
being could have done who was not possessed of 
superhuman, superangelic and divine nature. 

They agree with Dr. Campbell in the justifica- 
tion of a sinner by faith without the deeds of the 
law, and of a Christian, not by faith alone, but 
by the obedience of faith : in the operation of the 
Holy Spirit through the Word, but not without 
it, in the conversion and justification of the sin- 
ner. Also in the right and duty of exercising 
our own judgment in the interpretation of the 



PKUDENS FTJTURI. 8T 

Holy Scriptures ; in the authority and perpetuity 
of baptism, and the weekly administration of the 
Lord's Supper, which, they contend, has the war- 
rant of apostolic example, and is therefore of 
divine obligation, and they say that it was the 
principal motive for the meetings of the first 
Christians on the Lord's Day, and for the pecul- 
iar sanctification of that day. 

But they do not believe in the divine institu- 
tion of the evangelical ministry, will accept no 
form of church government save that of elders 
who are old in wisdom and experience, build no 
churches, gather at each other's houses, and hold 
that baptism is immersion. 

" By whom are you baptized ? " I ask. 

" By any one, by you as well as another," and, 
pleased at the interest displayed, hopeful of a 
convert, the boatman tells of his twenty-five-mile 
walk to and from the nearest water when he was 
baptized. Other experience succeeds, a hymn is 
sung, and, all rising, receive the benediction. 



A HAUNTED HOUSE. 



A HAUNTED HOUSE. 



The following narration has long been a mat- 
ter of oral tradition in my family circle, and may 
interest a larger audience : 

" When I was about live years old, my father 
purchased some old houses in a small market 
town of Gloucestershire, England, one of which 
we occupied. The former tenants were known to 
my mother, but had died shortly before. No 
sooner were we settled down than my parents' 
.sleep was disturbed by a ceaseless pattering over 
the boards in the bedrooms, as if a little bare- 
footed child were running up and down. Wak- 
ing up at the noise, my father would leap from 
bed and chase the flying footsteps, always to stop, 
baffled, at the head of the stairway, where they 
suddenly ceased. As both he and his wife were 
what would now be called mediums, and had re- 
ceived equally curious testimony of the life im- 
mortal in the past, they became gradually accus- 
tomed to the footsteps, and attributing them to a 
spiritual source, ceased to notice them except by 
a passing remark. 

" Some months passed, and one bright summer 
morning, following my usual custom, I left my 



y% PEUDENS FUTUKI. 

bed to nestle beside my mother and the baby. It 
may have been about six o'clock, the sun was 
shining brightly in at the windows, and I had 
scarcely settled myself comfortably in place, when 
I saw a woman standing by the left-hand side of 
the bed. Jumping to the conclusion that my 
eldest sister was playing a joke upon me, and 
with childish glee at my own quick comprehen- 
sion, I slipped my right hand from under the 
clothes, ready to catch hold of her as she neared 
me. Never moving my eyes from the figure, I 
watched it as, coming slowly down that side, and 
rounding the foot, it turned, showing the full 
face, that of a stranger, and came slowly toward 
my trembling, outstretched hand, which I was 
too terrified to withdraw, when it suddenly van- 
ished. A thin, spare face, with sharp, pinched 
nose, eyes deep-sunken and set in heavy shadows, 
dark hair braided on the forehead. Sixty years 
have passed since I saw it, multitudes of other 
faces have come between that time and the pres- 
ent, but my recollection of it is clear as if seen 
but yesterday. Dressed as it was in a long white 
nightgown, a cap with deep full border, and with 
a white handkerchief tied under the jaws, coming 
a little over the chin, I had no fear nor concep- 
tion of death at that time, yet well remember 



PRTJDENS FTTTURI. 93 

burying my head under the coverlet, while all 
the answer my mother could get from me was, ' I 
saw a woman ! I saw a woman ! ' 

"But as my first blind terror passed, my 
mother coaxed me to describe the figure, and 
said to a neighbor, ' Yes, it was Mrs. Cole.' This 
was the name of the old tenant, and a story was 
whispered in the town of her past cruelty to an 
orphan nephew, who had died in childhood in 
that house, leaving her heiress to the property he 
would have enjoyed, had he lived. Association 
of ideas and rumor alike suggest that he had 
been shut up, starved and beaten in those upper 
rooms, and when trying to escape, naturally 
sought flight by the stairway. 

" Fifteen years passed, the family circle was 
broken; death, marriage and distant pursuits, 
had left my mother alone in the old home, when 
awakening early one morning, she saw the same 
woman, dressed as when I beheld her, seated on 
the side of the bed, the cap border crushed as if 
the head had just been lifted from the pillow 
Intently regarding her, my mother then turned 
her back on the unwelcome visitor, and prayed 
that she might be removed. Looking round 
again, she was gone. 

" I believe the poor unhappy spirit was earth- 



94 PEUDENS FITTURI. 

bound, doomed herself to wander about the room 
in which she had caused the little innocent child 
to suffer. The miserable expression of that face, 
its appearance of profound sorrow, is a mournful 
memory, yet I often recall it with feelings of deep 
thankfulness ; considering it a great privilege, in 
this age of doubt and skepticism, to have looked 
upon a disembodied spirit, face to face." 

Elizabeth Bull. 
London, England. 



A STRANGE MANIFESTATION 



A STRANGE MANIFESTATION. 



I was sitting in my room, my oldest boy (now 
40 years of age) a baby on my lap, a servant en- 
gaged in removing the tea things, and, feeling 
very happy, I was humming a tune. Suddenly 
I noticed in a corner of the room a small mass of 
misty whiteness. Shaking my linger warningly 
at the girl to silence her, and looking intently at 
this strange object, it rapidly increased in size 
until several feet in height; growing gradually 
dense and more opaque, and slowly opening, it re- 
vealed the glorified form of my dear sister. I say 
glorified, since language utterly fails to convey 
any idea of that lovely, wondrous vision. 

She had died in her twenty-third year of linger- 
ing consumption, ten years before; and had borne 
great suffering with Christian fortitude, joyfully 
looking for speedy release. Unselfish and lov- 
able, a beautiful soul fitly clothed, she gradually 
wasted under the fell disease, and died at length 
in my arms. But now I saw her again — all traces 
of lingering disease had vanished, she looked ra- 
diantly beautiful as, holding back the surround- 
ing envelope, she leaned towards me, the dear, 



98 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

sweet eyes gazing into mine with a look of unut- 
terable love. She wore a long, loose robe of 
dazzling whiteness, hanging about her in graceful 
folds, and there emanated from her a mellow, 
soft light, making the encrusting shell glitter like 
crystal. So gloriously beautiful was the appear- 
ance that I could not gaze upon it without pain, 
nor do I think that natural eyes could have seen 
it; but so soon as 1 had thoroughly realized this 
angelic presence she gradually drew the encir- 
cling mass about her, and ever steadfastly regard- 
ing me, was gradually hidden from view, the 
luminous envelope clouded, darkened slowly, 
shrank, and disappeared. 

My incoherent exclamations of delight and 
wonder frightened the girl, who had seen nothing 
save my own wrapt gaze; but I had seen my sis- 
ter, and I shall see her again in our heavenly 
home, where there is no more sorrow, no more 
parting, no more death. 

Elizabeth Bull. 

London, England. 



the Christadelphians and 
the darbyites. 



TEE CHBISTADELPEIANS AND 
THE DARBYITES. 



I had designed, on this occasion, to make a 
sect closely resembling the Plymouth Brethren, 
the Thomasites, or Christadelphians, my theme; 
a sect so little known that the very name, apart 
from a free translation, the Brethren of Christ, 
does not occur in the latest ecclesiastical authori- 
ties, and it was therefore with some curiosity that 
I reached Hooley's Theater, only to find that the 
meeting formerly held in its upper rooms was 
dissolved, and that this body now has no ecclesia 
in Chicago. This I regretted, since they are 
eclectic rather than the reverse, as their name 
might imply, and an exposition of the peculiar be- 
liefs they entertained promised to be interesting. 
From a " Declaration of the First Principles of 
the Oracles of the Deity, set forth in a series of 
propositions demonstrating that the Faith of 
Christendom is made up of the Fables predicted 
by Paul (2 Paul iv : 4), and entirely subversive of 
the Faith once for all delivered to the saints," 
I learn their belief. 

There will be a " Divine Political Dominion 
established on earth as the Kingdom of God 



102 PRUDENS FITTURI. 

Jerusalem will be the Queen City of the World, 
the residence of the Lord Jesus, the headquarters 
and metropolis of the kingdom of God." This 
will continue for a thousand years, and be suc- 
ceeded by the last judgment, when the approved 
will be immortalized, the wicked annihilated. 
Man's life, they claim, is merely mortal, the 
resurrection and consequent immortality, " im- 
mortality of life manifested through an undecay- 
ing body," only to be attained through Christ. 
Differing from the Plymouth Brethren in the 
above particulars, in their belief in the unity of 
God, though they recognize the preternatural 
birth of Jesus Christ, in their denial of the exist- 
ence of hell and of a personal devil, for which 
they furnish biblical authority; they are one in 
church government, in the form of administra- 
tion of the communion, and in the rigid exclu- 
ness that distinguishes " saints " from all others. 
Disappointed in this quest, I passed through 
the deserted streets of Chicago's business heart, 
and exchanging greetings with my friends the 
Hicksites on their way to meeting, entered an 
adjacent building where the Brethren gather. I 
had been led to believe that only brethren were 
expected to meet at the morning sacrament, that 
pleading was considered out of place in the 



PBUDENS FTJTURI. 103 

assembly of believers, and that it was usual to 
preach in the evening only to such as were not 
converted. Happily my authority, noted light 
though he is, was at fault, and proof was offered 
at the outset that the little known, or supposed 
to be known about the Brethren, is inaccurate, an 
opinion which my later experience will confirm. 
I was kindly greeted, cordially invited to a seat, 
and found myself among the saints. 

It was a comfortable room, with seating ca- 
pacity for the two score assembled, occupying a 
double circle of chairs around an extension dining- 
table, on which stood a tumbler of wine and small 
loaf of bread, and the basket for offerings. The 
room was lighted on each side by windows look- 
ing out on a central court, used as a poultry-yard 
by a neighboring restaurant. 

Hymns and prayers by different brethren al- 
ternated with long wedges of silence given up to 
silent prayer and meditation. During prayer 
some kneeled, some stood, others simply bowed 
the head, as inclination dictated. An hour 
passed, and the meeting so far resembled an or- 
dinary prayer-meeting, without a chairman and 
lacking in zeal. But glancing around, and no- 
ticing the wrapt expression of each face, who but 
saints, thought I, could remain oblivious of such 



104 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

unyielding seats, such a babel of cocks crowing, 
ducks quacking, rattle of spoons, and clatter of 
dishes from court-yard and restaurant, fidgeting 
of little ones and hushing by mothers, or fail to 
see how slowly the sunbeams crept down the 
well-like walls toward us. Truth seemed in very 
deed to lie at the bottom of a well. 

They seemed happily unmindful of these vari- 
ous discomforts, their heads bowed in thought, 
or elevated, with fast-closed eyes, until their 
faces were parallel with the horizon. A people 
of strong convictions, good foreheads, small 
noses, many with ruddy locks (but not, forgive 
the pun, Sandemanians), opposed to Malthusian 
doctrines, if the fact that one-fourth of our num- 
ber were babies in arms, or little children, may 
be considered evidence. 

The hymns were all old ones, of the time 
when general application was encouraged, before 
the Bliss and Sankey era had introduced the I 
and Me, the egotistical and personal form of 
appeal. 

As the hour closes the cloth is removed, a 
short prayer uttered, and the Lord's Supper 
shared by all the saints ; close communion is ob- 
served, the brother on my right rising as plate 
and goblet successively reach him, and carrying 



PKUDENS FUTURI. 105 

tliem round me to the sisters on the other side. 
A white-haired old man rises at its close to tell 
of a case of destitution which he has thoroughly 
investigated, in which a hard-working woman, 
outside of their community, has struggled, until 
overcome by sickness, to maintain her children 
and drunken husband, refused all aid by Roman 
Catholic relatives unless the children are re- 
signed to them. 

The day's collection, originally designed for 
the support of worship, is voted for this purpose, 
and as we leave each approaches the table and 
contributes to the fund. Before breaking up, a 
letter is read from a missionary laboring in that 
benighted region, New Jersey, who reports the 
accession of a Methodist clergyman and his en- 
tire family, speaks of the salary due his convert, 
withheld by his former flock for his apostasy, of 
the violent opposition he himself encounters, and 
adds, " But this is the way of the world, the re- 
ligious world. Thank G-od, we are not of it! " 
concluding with love to the saints. 

I am favored with pamphlets and tracts, from 
which, and subsequent conversation and inquiry, 
I condense the following facts regarding this 
little known body. So little known that it is 
popularly yet erroneously considered to hold the 



106 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

apostolic doctrine of community of goods, and its 
verj title is a^ misnomer. They accept the name 
under protest, use it only with the article, " The 
Plymouth Brethren," deeming it like the term 
Darbyite, a vulgar appellation, and speak of 
themselves only as the Brethren. 

They accept no written creed, encourage entire 
freedom of belief, yet hold to the doctrine of total 
depravity, the necessity of regeneration by the 
Holy Spirit, and atonement by the sufferings and 
death of Christ. Originating in Dublin in 1829, 
it was two years later before the congregation 
was formed in Plymouth, which speedily num- 
bered 1,500 persons, and finally separated into 
Darbyites and Newtonites. When Darby subse- 
quently expatriated himself to Switzerland, the 
work throve there, and his principles are the sub- 
stantial basis of nearly all the so-called free 
evangelical associations of Italy. The first so- 
ciety was simply a gathering of Christians for 
religious improvement, who adopted the princi- 
ple that they were free to celebrate the Lord's 
Supper without the help of any ordained minis- 
ter; but did not separate themselves from the 
churches of which they were members, and some 
of their present ministers in England are mem- 
bers of the Established Church. 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 107 

The Bethesda society established near Bristol 
in 1832, retains similar views, and their trust in 
the power of prayer for the supply of temporal 
necessities is nobly exemplified in the person of 
their leader, George Muller. 

They believe that sectarian divisions are so 
many indications of the ruin of Christianity; that 
believers should withdraw from them, "and meet 
in separation from all ecclesiastical mummery." 
Rejecting any special ordination of the ministry, 
they consider all true Christians are priests, and 
authorize such to preach and administer sacra- 
ments, without further ordination than proof of 
their being found able to edify the brethren : re- 
garding the work of pastors and evangelists as 
distinct, they allow payment of the latter while 
itinerating, but consider the payment of the pas- 
tors unscriptural. The sacrament is with them a 
weekly rite; and adult baptism is held to be of 
such moment, that, although not a condition of 
membership, members are usually re-immersed. 

Although Darby's strictures were directed 
principally against the Church of England, he is 
accepted as authority by the Brethren to-day, and 
a revised edition of his pamphlets is laid under 
contribution for the following summary. 

While the aims and purposes of believers are 



108 PRUDENS FITTUKI. 

very mixed in their nature, and fall far below the 
standard for which God has gathered them, and 
which He proposed as the influential object of 
their faith, and consequently as the motive of 
their conduct, division and sectarianism are, even 
in the mercy of God's providence, the necessary 
result. To suppose unity when the Church falls 
entirely short of the just consequences of its faith, 
is to suppose that the spirit of God would ac- 
quiesce in the moral inconsistency of degenerate 
man, and that God would be satisfied that 
His Church should sink below the glory of its 
Great Head, without even a testimony that He 
was dishonored by it. 

When it was utterly sunk in apostasy, he raised 
his witnesses, yet still it was manifestly united 
with much that was merely human. This gave 
to the church a character which many discerned 
to be short of that which was acceptable to God. 
These observations are applicable to all the great 
national Protestant bodies, since the outward form 
and constitution became so prominent a matter, 
which was not the case originally while delivery 
from popery was in question. From this has 
followed an anomalous and trying consequence — 
that the Church of God has no avowed commun- 
ion at all. The bond of communion is no longer 



PRUDENS FTTTTTRI. 10 £ 

the unity of the people of God, but, in point of 
fact, their difference. 

It is not a formal union of the outward pro- 
fessing bodies that is desired. The life of the 
church and the power of the Word would be 
lost, and the unity of life utterly excluded. 

Hence he deduces that one who seeks the in- 
terest of any particular denomination is, so far, 
an enemy to the work of the spirit of God, and 
that those who believe in the power and coming 
of Jesus, ought carefully to keep back from such 
"an unchristian spirit." 

What we must light against is the " practical 
spirit of worldliness in essential variance with 
the true termini of the gospel, the death and 
coming again of the Lord Jesus." 

Would we be united, he argues, it must be the 
work of the Holy Spirit, and be indicated by 
growing, positive separation from all church 
bonds, and by "universal subjection to the Spirit, 
as our great, peculiar and proposed safeguard and 
strength." 

Inviting no publicity, seeming to court ob- 
scurity, with no positive dogma, the distinction 
between a Plymouth brother and other sects, or, 
as he would say, the sects, is hard to define; but 
it may be summed up in the fact that every sec- 



110 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

tarian difference is wrong, since division is wrong. 
This, and a firm reliance on the Bible as the 
Word of G-od, constitute all that they require 
" to walk in the light as God is of the light," and 
to have fellowship one with another. 



AN OBSCURE DISEASE. 



AN OBSCURE DISEASE. 



Digest below from a contribution of Mary 
Boole, relict of George Boole, to a recent num- 
ber of the Athenceum, may interest many other 
readers, who would doubtless welcome, as I 
should, any further information relative to the 
Bev. T. Everest or George Boole, and the views 
they held in the matters touched upon. This I 
ask for editorially, or from some of your valued 
correspondents, if you consider it of sufficient 
interest to accord the necessary space. 

Somewhere between the years 1837 and 1843, 
my father, Thomas Everest, rector of "Wickwar, 
in studying what is called occult science with 
the aid of a celebrated physician, made the dis- 
covery of a certain obscure disease, which, when 
it attacks persons of low animal organization, 
shows itself in a depraved taste for unseemly 
conversation about human relationships; if it 
happens to infect a man or woman of fine spirit- 
ual type, it takes the form of a desire to pry into 
the relations of man to the invisible. This 
seems to have been known to Jewish prophets 
from very early times; but I have some reason 



114 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

to think that my father and his medical teacher 
were first led to perceive it owing to the simi- 
larity of the reactions of certain drugs in the two 
cases. My father studied the subject closely. In 
1851 he endeavored to call attention to it in a 
sermon preached in London; but, of course, at 
that day he was obliged to use carefully veiled 
language. He was treated by medical men as a 
fanatic, and theologians called him an atheist. 
The world was not ready for his doctrine. He 
endeavored to teach his family as much as he 
could ; we should, however, have understood him 
better had he not kept us almost as carefully 
shielded as the children of Jonadab, the son of 
Lechab, from contact with the tendency against 
which he uttered so many warnings. No " the- 
ology" was allowed to enter our house, nor any 
novels or magazines in which it was alluded to. 
But I remember enough of his teaching to have 
grown to understand it later in life with my hus- 
band's help. Mr. Everest considered it espe- 
cially sinful to attempt to convert a Jew to any 
Gentile form of Christianity, and said that the 
Jews as a body are destined ultimately to under- 
stand Jesus in a way of their own. When I asked 
him what our church means by calling Christ 
< God,' he seemed anxious to make me drop the 



PRUDENS FUTURI. 115 

subject. He said : ' He is a manifestation of God ; 
you are a manifestation of God yourself.' He 
forbade my seeking any other explanation, and at 
different times told us that Christ is our master; 
that whenever we can find out what his words 
mean, we ought to obey him literally, regardless 
of consequences, so we shall come to as much 
knowledge of God as is good for us; and that 
those who seek to find God in any other way 
than by such obedience, bring on themselves 
physical and moral injury. 

Dipsomania and kleptomania are recognized 
terms employed to temper the disgrace brought 
upon decent families by scapegrace (scapegoat) 
relatives. Is it not high time that Spiritualists 
diagnosed a " certain obscure disease," if it exist, 
and thus account for our Sheas, Blisses, and other 
persons of low animal organization, barnacles on 
the good ship Progress ? 



L'ENVOl 



EENYOI. 



Of those who, in their various ways, 
Give to Creation's Lord the praise — 
Of folk devout, whate'er their creed, 
Right gladly do I sing: 

But not of deeds of high emprise, 
ISTor yet of wasted human lives, 
To gratify the ambition 
Of tyrant prince or king. 

But of those who patient thrive, 
Who still humbly live and strive, 
Content that, in His own time, 
Their God will to them bring, 

For their labors due reward; 
That when over them the sward 
Its mantle of true charity 
With tender hand will fling, 

Christ will say, to their award 
They have gone with conq'ring sword, 
The grave hath won no victory, 
Death had for them no sting! 



120 PRUDENS FUTURI. 

And I pray, when I too wait, 
Expectant near Heaven's gate, 
I may hear the anthems chanted 
By the great encircling ring 

Of the seraphs, who, in state 
On the great Jehovah wait, 
Singing sweet praise ever 

To their Prophet, Priest and King. 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



